CHITTAGONG: Five supporters of a hardline Islamist group were shot dead in Bangladesh on Friday during violent demonstrations across the country against a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, officials said.
The disturbances came as Bangladesh marked 50 years of independence with rights groups calling for an end to growing authoritarianism including forced disappearances and extra-judicial killings.
Police said four bodies of members of Hefazat-e-Islam, a hardline Islamist group, were brought to Chittagong Medical College Hospital after violence erupted at Hathazari, a rural town where the group's main leaders are based.
"We got four bodies here. They are all hit with bullets. Three of them are madrasa students and another a tailor," Alauddin Talukder, a police inspector at the hospital, told AFP.
He said at least four other demonstrators were critically injured but did not say who opened fire.
Ruhul Amin, the government administrator of Hathazari town, said up to 1,500 supporters of Hefazat attacked a police station chanting anti-Modi slogans.
"They attacked us all of a sudden," he said, without confirming whether any protesters were killed.
Violence also spread at Jatrabari, a neighbourhood in the capital Dhaka, and in the eastern border district of Brahmanbaria with thousands of madrasa students demonstrating in the two places.
At Brahmanbaria one person was killed during clashes with police, a police spokesman told AFP, adding officers "opened live fire" and lobbed tear gas at Islamists protesting Modi's visit for the independence day celebrations.
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